Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely.
This publishes five days weekly with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

TRSL sent out a news
release with the latest results from a research firm comparing its
performance to other state pension funds, and to a smaller subgroup of those
with similar asset amounts. Over the five-year period ending in 2011, TRSL
returned 10.7 percent and 2.6 percent in private equity and real assets,
respectively. The U.S. average was 7.4 percent for private equity and 1.8
percent for real assets. The release did not give such statistics for the peer
group; unfortunately, the report is not publicly available, so TRSL’s place
among its peers cannot be determined, but it seems that positive news in that
category would have been reported in the release.

But, as with an analysis of LASERS, this kind of relative comparison means
little without looking at absolute performance metrics. One of these is to
compare the return on investments of the fund. At the end of fiscal year 2011, it
held about 60 percent in equities, about 15 percent in bonds, and the remainder
in “alternative investments,” which appear to be real estate and commodities
among other things. Reviewing return for the past five years reported (that is,
performance for FY 2007 through 2011), which includes more than just the
categories cited in the release, the average annual return for it was 3.074
percent, compared to the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index (which is based on
equities) return of a 4.143 percent. In other words, the fund would have done
better by plowing everything into an index fund representing the S&P 500.

12.9.12

With news that most of
Louisiana’s charity hospitals may get downsized confirms the move to
dismantle the system as it is has come to the stage of a realistic alternative
future, also bringing big change to some other related areas of policy, and not
a second too soon to benefit the state.

Spurred by the sudden
loss of a good chunk of its Medicaid reimbursement from the federal
government – the vast majority of these public hospitals’ business is paid for
that way, making Louisiana public institutions a wildly
disproportionate user of those funds – at first former system leaders
developed a strategy to cope by using mainly reserve funds, necessary because they
remained invested in the notion that public hospitals providing free care to
the indigent must exist.In retrospect,
this appears now accepted then only because of the compressed time frame, but
that the basing of the response on the concept of necessity of public hospitals
was not considered viable over the long haul.

As such, the officials in charge of the entire ten-hospital system and of
the Health Care Services Division that
oversees seven of them, while the remaining three in Shreveport, Monroe, and
Pineville are organized separately under the auspices of the Louisiana
State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport, were
removed and the new officials came up with a different strategic paln for
the system that largely gets it out of the direct provision of hospitalization
services. In its most radical version, the plan calls for all but the New
Orleans one to be downsized in bed capacity to 10, with the New Orleans one set
at 150.

11.9.12

Today is a big day in Louisiana higher education, a sector sliced many
times in recent years by planned and surprise budget cuts, with for most
institutions the reporting of enrollment figures (a couple of days late because
of Hurricane Isaac closures) that will determine its revenue picture for the
remainder of the year. Yet any good news (that is, enrollment increases,
meaning more revenue) for institutions only will delay the day of reckoning
coming to Louisiana higher education as a whole unless major policy changes occur.

Although the report from the State Higher
Education Officers Organization came out six months ago, recent interviews concerning data from its State Higher Education Funding 2011 edition demonstrate
that education policy to date has not significantly changed the headwinds
Louisiana higher education faces. Some of the larger trends affecting it the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors
has heard recently. But the specific ills as they apply to this state’s higher
education system remain unaddressed and therefore unresolved.

Much moaning and groaning has circulated concerning funding of Louisiana
higher education, as the state in total has retracted over a half a billion
dollars, or about a fifth of its total state subsidization, since 2008. Tuition
increases have made up a good portion of the difference, leading to another lind
of carping about students (and taxpayers, through the Taylor Opportunity
Program for Students) paying more, but institutions and governance boards still
complain that not only are further significant cuts positioned to bring
apocalyptic results to their sector, but that increases in state subsidization
only may improve quality delivery.

10.9.12

Long predating the bogus
“fact check” mania spawned in recent times by the mainstream media, for a
number of years the Baton Rouge Advocate
has run a version of it called “Ask
the Advocate,” providing some kinds of answers to questions presumably generated from stories in the newspaper. However, the answers don’t always accurately
capture the meaning and context of the issue in reference, which can mislead
when the discussion is politics.

A case in point regards its explanation of teacher union presence in
Louisiana. The relevant part of the article reads: “Q. There has been a lot of
talk lately about teacher unions. How many parishes in Louisiana actually
recognize collective bargaining for teachers? A. Seven of Louisiana’s 70 school
districts have collective bargaining rights with one of Louisiana’s two teacher
unions.” It then lists the districts and whether it is the Louisiana Federation of Teachers or the Louisiana Association of Educators that
represents in each.

Of slight annoyance, the snippet implies that only 7/70 = 10 percent of
teachers enter into collective bargaining. In fact, the proportion is a bit
higher, the latest
figure available being 11.6 percent. More perturbing, the way the question
is phrased, focusing solely on collective bargaining, restricts the inquiry
into the implied part of the question – there is “a lot of talk about teacher
unions” because they are inserting themselves forcefully into the political
process, which goes far beyond just collective bargaining. (It also negates the
fact that there actually are three statewide unions, the other being the Associated Professional Educators of
Louisiana, which has no collective bargaining units established and
declines to identify itself only as a union saying it is a broader professional
organization).

9.9.12

If Louisiana legislators remain invested in the same ideology that has
spawned the hundreds of tax exceptions, not a single constructive thing will
emerge from the effort.

Last week, the Revenue Study
Commissionreviewed a number of these in an effort to parse out whether
policy as it exists in this regard optimally forgoes revenues because of these
exceptions. Part of the exercise allowed arguments, particularly from current beneficiaries,
stating cases as to why their breaks, some of which on the surface seem very
questionable, should continue.

And so we got from them arguments like Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne’s, who
oversees arts policy as part of his portfolio, defending the sales tax
exemption on art sales in the state’s designated 63 arts districts, who claimed
it was a economic redevelopment tool that cost only $500,000 over the past two
years but the districts themselves had economic activity of over $1 billion.
Bullion dealers say introduction of a sales tax exemption on sales above $1,000
caused their business to increase many times. A representative with the New
Orelans Jazz and Heritage festival said a new exemption applies to sales tax on
admission and vendor sales helps “maintain a ticket price that is reasonable.”

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